Atheism

On Saturday, December 6th, the annual Michigan Atheists convention will be held at the Wyndham Gardens (formerly Clarion Hotel – same place as last few years), in Ann Arbor. There will be a series of speakers/presentations starting at 10am. Registration is $30, plus $16.50 for a private lunch. However, the registration is free for any organizers and student members of high school, college and university on-site campus secular organizations.

The Michigan Atheists are a group that fights for the separation of church and state. When Michigan policy-makers attempt to legislatively promote religion, the Michigan Atheists try to inform the secular community and mobilize an appropriate response.

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Brother Sam’s show is called, “Cats, Sheep and Goats: The Taxonomy of Atheists, Believers and Preachers”

Michigan Skeptics is proud to present Sam Singleton in his return to Michigan.

Brother Sam is presenting his latest show: Cats, Sheep and Goats: The Taxonomy of Atheists, Believers and Preachers.

Brother Sam and his cousin Palmer have followed widely disparate paths, Sam becoming an atheist evangelist, Palmer remaining faithful to their holy roller upbringing. Palmer is the one member of the Singleton clan who has stuck by Sam. And Sam is exasperated that anybody so smart and decent can be so misguided. Palmer feels exactly the same way. Their conversations, as recounted in Cats, Sheep and Goats: the Taxonomy of Atheists, Believers and Preachers, are a fun-house-mirror view of relations between atheists and believers.

This will be the third time for MISkeptics to host Brother Sam. It’s a sell out every time. Get ready to laugh until it hurts. Sam Singleton is a force all his own.

Tickets for Sam Singleton are $15 at the door and $10 in Advance. You can purchase tickets online by RSVPing at our Meetup page, our Facebook page, or you can purchase the tickets directly by following this link.

CFI-Michigan is co-sponsoring this lecture with The Birmingham Temple Congregation for Humanistic Judaism.

Greta Christina will speak on her newest book “Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why”

Coming out is the most powerful political act atheists can take. But coming out can be difficult and risky. What are some specific, practical, nuts-and-bolts strategies we can use: to come out of the closet, to support each other in coming out, and to make the atheist community a safer place to come out into? What can atheists learn about coming out from the LGBT community and their decades of coming-out experience — and what can we learn from the important differences between coming out atheist and coming out queer?

She will be speaking in Grand Rapids on September 10th and in Farmington Hills on the 11th.

Greta will be speaking in Grand Rapids and in Farmington Hills

About the Speaker

Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind.

She is author of Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of Paying For It: A Guide for Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and is on the speaker’s bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and Center for Inquiry. She is a regular contributor to AlterNet, Salon, The Humanist, and Free Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and anthologies including Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of Best American Erotica. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. She tweets at @GretaChristina, and has been writing about atheism on Greta Christina’s Blog since 2005.

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American Atheists and the Roku – that little box that lets you watch TV through the internet – have forged an unholy alliance to bring us the AtheistTV network! The best part is that you don’t need a Roku to watch it. You can also get AtheistTV through their live streamstarting at 7:00 PM tonight. I’m assuming they mean EST (I didn’t see it specified on their site either way).

Here’s what it says about programming for AtheistTV:

We have partnered with content creators in the atheist community to bring engaging and entertaining content to AtheistTV. We are working with experienced producers to develop new, original programming that will launch soon.
If you are interested in developing content or submitting existing content to AtheistTV, please contact us.
Current content partners include: the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the Atheist Community of Austin, American Atheists, The Friendly Atheist, and Keith Lowell Jensen.

I would suggest that anyone with a classy YouTube channel about atheism, skepticism, science, or anything else atheists care about contact AtheistTV about starting a show for the network. Like most fledgling Cable channels, I’m sure they are hungry for new content.

Good luck to AtheistTV. Please don’t suck. I hope people will check it out and give Roku a reason to keep it around.

EDIT: For those of you with a Roku, here is a direct link to add the channel.

EDIT2: A message from Dave Muscato, PR Director for American Atheists; “You don’t need a Roku to watch Atheist TV! You can watch online at http://www.atheists.tv as well!”

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Do Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in the theory of evolution? As a former Jehovah’s Witness who once spent an inordinate amount of time researching their Creation Book, I can tell you that the official answer is a resounding no. (The book is officially called Life-How did it get here? By evolution or by creation? But it is commonly just called the Creation Book by Jehovah’s Witnesses.) This book is the Watchtower Society’s magnum opus on evolution. Yet it remains infamous for an abundance of bad science, quote mining, and an embarrassing habit of strategically leaving off parts of quotes so as to alter their original meaning. (Yikes!) Many people have written about the book, including Austin Cline at About.com. Even Richard Dawkins devoted a chapter to it in The God Delusion. Think what you will, but it’s clear that the Society’s Creation Book has gotten around.

On December 5th 2013, at the age of 95, Nelson Mandela died. He was South Africa’s first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. He also served over 27 years in prison for his activism prior to that. The end of Apartheid in South Africa is credited largely to him. He was called a lot of things when he died, a hero, a savior, a great leader, a terrorist, a communist, and a murderer. But what was he really?

On Saturday, January 18 at 1:00 PM, we’re teaming up with Minority Atheists of Michigan to talk about Nelson Mandela. We will cut through the hype and hyperbole and learn the facts of his life and work. We will learn about the good and the bad and decide for ourselves who he was.

Our guest speaker will be Jamon Jordan. He is the Co-Founder and Facilitator of the Black Scroll Study Group. A local organization that researches any and all phenomena related to Black people.

Jamon Jordan is the Co-Founder and Facilitator of the Black Scroll Study Group

They present their findings through educational materials for institutions to use in order to present data on Black/African history and culture that is frequently overlooked.

Come and join us for lively discussion, drinks, dinner and debate! This is a good event for Skeptics of Michigan to come together and discuss local, national, worldwide items affecting Skeptics. All are welcome to listen and participate.

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As with most things, Jehovah’s Witnesses will take their cues on women and domestic violence from the Watchtower Society. Before we dive in, a short review about a woman’s role at the Kingdom Hall is in order.

As I mentioned in a previous article, women who are Jehovah’s Witnesses are told to be in subjection to their fathers and then their husbands after marriage. Women may not teach in the presence of men or perform other duties reserved for men without wearing some sort of head covering as a sign of deference. They are not allowed to give public talks or handle microphones during meetings at a Kingdom Hall. Their only role in meetings is a public demonstration, given at just one of their five weekly meetings (fun!), where the sisters role play for a few minutes. (It’s not a fun kind of role play, so don’t even go there.) These performances were almost identical to a much dreaded part of my morning sales meetings when I worked at a local department store some years ago, except that men and women were treated equally at the store. And we got paid.

Elders are not supposed to talk to congregation sisters in private without a chaperone. This is usually another elder or, in some situations, a woman’s husband or father. I was told by at least three elders at my former Kingdom Hall that this was standard procedure and was intended to prevent sisters from crying rape or trying to “come on” to an elder. Because … you know … chicks, I guess. The elders were not required to do this when talking to a brother, however.

From Watchtower 11/15/91 page 21-22 paragraph 14

It is inadvisable for an elder to make a shepherding call on a sister alone. The elder should be accompanied by another elder or a ministerial servant.

From Watchtower 2/15/93 page 15 paragraph 12

In developed countries some have fallen into Satan’s trap by often being with a member of the opposite sex and without a third person present—such as regularly being in the confined intimacy of a car for driving lessons. Elders doing shepherding calls also need to exercise caution so as not to be alone with a sister when counseling her. Conversations can become emotionally charged and result in an embarrassing situation for both parties.—Compare Mark 6:7; Acts 15:40.

I’m sure some elders at some Kingdom Halls might be willing to bend these rules under certain circumstances, but this policy tells you a few things about the way Jehovah’s Witnesses view (and value) women. Not as much as the Watchtower article I’m about to discuss below, however.

On Saturday, December 7th, the annual Michigan Atheists convention will be held at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center, in Ann Arbor. There will be a series of speakers/presentations starting at 10am. Registration is $30, plus $16.50 for a private lunch. However, the registration is free for any organizers and student members of high school, college and university on-site campus secular organizations.

You can register by printing out this form (27TH ANNUAL STATE CONVENTION) and mail it in with your fee. There is also a free reception on Friday evening from 7pm to 11pm for those who register.

The Michigan Atheists are a group that fights for the separation of church and state. When policy-makers overstep, the Michigan Atheists try to inform the secular community so that an appropriate reaction can take place.

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This month we had to delay our regular monthly meeting by one week due to MISkeptics was requested to host two panels for the ConClave SciFi/Fantasy convention. Which was a huge success. Special thanks to Bria Crutchfield, Chris Clayton and Howard Scrimgour for their help speaking on the panels. We had lots of fun, and many new members joined. As an added bonus, we have been tapped to provide skeptic content to the up and coming North American Science Fiction Convention next year. The entire weekend was amazing. Thanks to everyone that came out for the convention and also those who came out for the SitP afterwards.

Winner of South by Southwest’s Audience Award, Kumare is an insightful look at faith and belief.

For tomorrow, Saturday October 19th at 1:00 PM we are going to watch Kumaré.

A provocative social experiment-turned-documentary, Kumaré follows American filmmaker Vikram Gandhi as he transforms himself into a wise Indian guru, hoping to prove the absurdity of blind faith. Instead, he finds himself forging profound connections with people from all walks of life — and wondering if and when to reveal his true self. Will his followers accept his final teaching? Can this illusion reveal a greater spiritual truth? Winner of South by Southwest’s Audience Award, Kumare is an insightful look at faith and belief.

Kumaré received fair reviews upon release. Many movie reviewers criticized Gandhi’s deception as immoral, but partially forgave Gandhi for realizing that the experiment had grown out of his control. Many compared the character of Kumaré and the deception by Gandhi to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character and film. Those who liked the movie, like Stephen Holden of the New York Times and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, praised the film’s message of “finding the guru within.”

Come and join us for lively discussion, drinks, dinner and debate! This is a good event for Skeptics of Michigan to come together and discuss local, national, worldwide items affecting skeptics. All are welcome to listen and participate.

Admission is free. Donations are helpful. You are responsible for your drinks and food.

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Segal’s latest release, ‘An Atheist Album,’ embodies her thoughts on religion and has quickly made her “a new pin-up girl for the international atheist movement.” (Barny Zwartz -The Age)

This Thursday night at 7:00 PM, CFI Michigan is hosting Australian Singer/Songwriter Shelley Segal for a free concert at Cafe Habana in Ann Arbor, MI.

The Melbourne based singer-songwriter became involved in secular activism over two years ago, despite her father being the president of a local synagogue. Her songs are a passionate response to dogmatic belief, inequality, religious oppression and the idea that only the devout can be grateful and good. She enjoys bringing this usually controversial topic to the public discourse and finds music to be a effective medium for expression and raising awareness. ‘I can say what I think for three minutes without anybody interrupting me.” (Melbourne Times City Weekly)

An Atheist Album gives a voice to the often underrepresented views of non-religious people, the fastest growing minority in many countries. As one youtube fan wrote, “I can always come home and listen to Shelley remind us all that we have a voice and a movement of our own, and that there is hope for the future.” After performing this year at the ‘Reason Rally’ to a crowd of 25,000 in Washington DC, Segal’s music video for her single Saved has gone global.